Advice to streamline your media workflow

In just the first 20 episodes of my podcast “Hacking Media Production,” I’ve collected hundreds of tips from journalists and producers on how to produce content better and faster. What follows is my selection of the 55 creative content production hacks.

1If you can think of it, someone may do it for $5: The site Fiverr is filled with mini creative services available for $5 such as drawing a cartoon of your dad, recording a voice-over message in Sean Connery’s voice, or even a bogus video testimonial for your product.

2Crowdsourcing design work still requires an art director: Be aware that using services such as 99designs or Crowdspring will cost more than you expect because you’ll likely need an art director to spend hours of time managing the contest and interacting with the designers to get the final product you want.

December, with all its holiday cheer, eases the pace of conferences and events in social media, marketing, and technology.

This December I’m most excited about Le Web in Paris, the city of lights, love and Internet innovation. This year Le Web will focus on how Internet-driven devices are taking over the world; just look at how much time people spend surfing “le web” on their phones. I’m also thoroughly excited for the 2012 startup competition where sixteen emerging startups will duke it out on stage. To learn more about this great conference read my take on Le Web.

Nicholas de Wolff, National Film Fes­ti­val for Tal­ented Youth:
“Too many peo­ple are div­ing into the Web 2.0 and 3.0 pools
before they even know with whom they are swim­ming.”

Social business seen as making seismic waves in marketing, sales, operations

The adoption of Web 2.0 and social networking accelerated significantly over the past year, and it shows no sign of stopping. Global digital word of mouth is disrupting growing swaths of business models, and CEOs want to understand its opportunities and threats. Although the Web is resplendent with prognostications from social media gurus, the voices of enterprise practitioners are too rarely heard.

To remedy that, I’ve gathered the perspectives of highly experienced executives who share their thoughts on how Web 2.0 is changing their businesses and mindsets. They also share its limitations and problems. Keep in mind that each contributor wrote independently, and I have made no attempt to unify their views, although I will offer my analysis and conclusions as well as the intriguing backstory below. Here is a sampling of the group’s eclectic insights:

A seismic shift in marketing is emergent, and chief marketing officers will require robust strategies to succeed consistently with Web 2.0 and use it to their advantage.

Gamification will redefine “work” and “play” and gradually make them indistinguishable.

Performance demands on government will force it to shed its laggard stereotype and pioneer social business at local and federal levels.

Arguably the biggest disruption of all is that green energy is enabling billions of previously unconnected people to join the world as participants; China and India are two of the fastest growing economies of the world, and millions of people are jumping online every year. Infrastructure limitations are forcing extreme innovation.

David Mathison on ‘the emerging media model of abundance’

Since last spring, David Mathison has been barnstorming the country, bringing the message of grassroots, accessible, citizen-based media to would-be journalists, filmmakers, musicians, podcasters, independent business people — anyone with an interest in creating media.

David’s book Be the Media: How to Create and Accelerate Your Message … Your Way is the most authoritative guide to the personal media revolution, which was just taking off in a big way when my book Darknet came out in 2005. Here, David offers a detailed guide for those with something to share and a look at the burgeoning community media landscape, from local online publications and social networks to personal broadcasting networks. Download sample chapters from the Be the Media website, then go out and buy the soft-cover edition.

I met David Mathison last summer at the Open Video conference in New York and followed up by attending a webinar he gave on effective use of citizen media. He took time out from his travels for this Q&A:

1 Tell us in general about Be the Media. Why did you write the book and what kind of reception are you getting?

Be The Media taps into people’s desires to communicate, connect, and collaborate. The book has been successful because it shows how anyone can create a global product launch that can potentially change the world. The book teaches people how to build a global or local base and widely spread their messages. It can also be seen as a detailed business plan for creating one’s own diversified media company. The book has been adopted at some of the country’s most respected schools, such as the University of Missouri School of Journalism, which is using it for a course called “Economics and Finance of the Media.”

2 Your book smartly takes a broad view of what it means to “be the media.” Tell us how regular people are now creating and distributing their own music, radio shows, digital films or periodicals. Which of these is resonating with people?

Context is key. When we exhibit at a book conference, writers are initially attracted to the chapters on

“Democracy depends on engaged, active, and knowledgeable citizens, and media literacy is an important component of that.” — David Mathison

Self-publishing and Blogging. At a music conference, musicians like the chapters on Radio, Podcasting, and Music. But they all quickly see the benefits of the other chapters — everyone needs to know about leveraging web sites, social media, licensing, syndication, print, audio, and video, and so on. Artists need to match their fans’ media consumption habits and pocketbooks. This means getting the message out via print, audio, video, interactive, and experiential events.

Inclusiveness was one of the main goals of the book — our audience includes not only writers, musicians, filmmakers, and journalists, but also entrepreneurs, politicians, activists, and the general public. After all, democracy depends on engaged, active, and knowledgeable citizens, and media literacy is an important component of that. Continue reading →

If I were starting out in journalism today, I’d probably opt to work for a Web-based publication — or start my own — rather than learn the ropes at a newspaper. Because those ropes are becoming increasingly frayed.

We’ve been checking in periodically with young people in the journalism field to get their take on how they’re dealing with the enormous changes taking place in the mediasphere.

One such person who immediately impressed me is Sharon Vaknin, a student at San Francisco State University and a producer/gadget guru at CBS Interactive’s CNET.com. She discusses her entry into journalism, broadcasting and the news business in this 6-minute video interview shot at a busy intersection in San Francisco.

Sharon says she’s “not really worried about” the future of the news business. “Web 2.0 has given us the opportunity to be more collaborative,” she says. “Because online is so collaborative right now, news will never disappear.”

Supernova roundup: Media, real-time services — and ‘the end of the Web era’

I spent Wednesday at the Supernova conference in San Francisco, which has morphed over the years from a gathering about mobile and telephony into one that addresses the larger themes sweeping through society: Social media. The real-time Web. Public policy in a connected society. New technologies that rewire our culture.

Given the enormously impressive attendee list, Supernova may now have the highest signal to noise ratio of any conference in the tech galaxy. I’ve written about Supernova in 2004, 2005 (here’s Caterina Fake and a Flickr set), 2006, 2007, and have spoken there twice — and, indeed, it was at Supernova 2004 that Marc Canter and I hatched the plan for Ourmedia‘s launch in March 2005 as the first video hosting and sharing site.

But this year’s Supernova may be the best one yet. It concludes this afternoon.

Please read on — you can skip the next six months of conferences, saving thousands in registration fees, just by reading this blog entry. Some Supernova highlights:

Is media getting more … feminine?

The “Is There a Media Business?” panel provided a lively give and take with the 75 or so participants in the session, and it focused less on the travails of the news business than on the larger forces churning through the media landscape: music and movies as well as news. I found it interesting that I had profiled two of the three participants, Jim Griffin and Cory Ondrejka, in my book Darknet. (You can read the chapter on Griffin at Pho, Cole Porter and Tarzan economics.)

The highlight for me came when Jim Griffin alluded to traditional media as quintessentially male in nature — pushing out product through blunt force and “the need to consummate a relationship without even getting your name” — while Lisa Stone and the panelists agreed that there may be a “feminization of media” underway, where the value comes from creating a relationship that never ends. Lisa called it the “coopetition” model of media, mutually cooperative and competitive.

I think there’s something to this: Social media is all about relationship building, about giving more than taking, and women still top men in that department.

After Lisa cited news publishers’ criticism of Google and the Huffington Post as “technological tapeworms” of the Internet — a few hours earlier Google announced it would restrict access to fee-based news sites — Cory quipped: “Google is handing a gun to mainstream media, ‘Here, go shoot yourself.’ Do you want your customers not to find [your articles]? … Making your content more obscure does not seem like the right approach.”

Griffin said more companies were in effect becoming media entities — like J&J, which purchased and is running BabyCenter.com for new and expectant parents (I used to run its editorial department).

It will take 3 years for Google, the music companies and Hollywood to come to an arrangement that pays stakeholders a share of revenue derived from ads on YouTube.

Midway through I made the point that the music companies and Hollywood studios deserve some credit for not cracking down on the literally millions of copyright violations that are appearing on YouTube every day. And I argued that the marketplace — we, the people — have indeed moved the goal posts over the past three years without the need for Congress to act.

I predict that it will take another three years for Google, the music companies and Hollywood to come to an arrangement that pays the various stakeholders a share of revenue derived from ads on YouTube, some of which will go to the musicians, some to the songwriters, some to the studios and so on. But rights are an enormously thorny bramble bush, and the lawyers and suits will spend years trying to figure out the new rules of the road in the digital age.

Let’s hope that Google will map the way for creative mashup monetization, just as Apple pioneered the way for music companies to enter the digital era after Napster. One hopes that the mashup artist gets a slice of the pie, too. Continue reading →